Fantasy Football 2011-12

With the new Barclays Premier League season starting on Saturday 13th August, it’s time to get your managerial hats on once again and form that winning Team that will rack up the points week on week. Simply head to www.fantasy.premierleague.com, sign up or use your own login details and get creating. It’s not just an individual game though, once you’ve created your Team, join the R.P Fantasy Football league by entering the code below to compete with every one else.

R.P Championship code: 267406-79114

As per usual, you can probably all expect to be an enthusiastic Fantasy Footballer untill about mid-September and then that Team will probably carry you through to next May when you’ll check it again next. Bring it on!

If you’re one of our regular Blog readers and have no interest in Football at all, then please feel free to watch the Mitchell and Webb video found below which is the perfect parody of Football coverage on TV….

Book Review – The Glory of Christ, R.C Sproul

If you’re a regular reader of Another King, like me, you’ll probably be quite confused or maybe amused that over our time of existence, we seem to be growing in numbers of authors whilst our number of ‘posts per month’ drop. I’ve decided to try and up my contribution to this particular Blog as i’m trying out a few tactics of using my Summer wisely, you’ll have to wait for a future post to find out more about that though….

The simplest means I could think of to try and pick up the slack of Another King was to review a book by R.C Sproul called ‘The Glory of Christ’. Firstly, some token information about the author: Dr. R.C. Sproul was born in 1939 in Pittsburgh and is the founder of Ligonier Ministries which is centred around educating and teaching, to top that all he has written over 50 books during his life.

The reason I wanted to review this book to you is that it is such a simple, but majestic read. Sproul takes you through Christ’s earthly life and ministry and shows how His glory can be seen in each and everyone of these moments. The chapters are all based around the specific area or focus of where the glory is to be found, for example, we have ‘Glory in the Fields’, ‘Glory in the Wilderness’, ‘Glory in the Upper Room’, ‘Glory on the Cross’, ‘Glory in the Return’; to name just a few. These chapters are short and so this book makes a wonderful compliment to your own time of personal devotions, the beauty of this is that Sproul takes just a few pages to highlight where the glory of Christ can be seen, even in a simple or everyday incident or location.The chapters also contain a great biblical-base and you’ll often find that Sproul is writing his own explanations and thoughts clearly alongside a given passage.

R.C Sproul

I’ve found that this book enabled me to have a growing realisation of the glory of Christ in my own life. As I read of how the glory of Him shone through in each of his actions, I found I began to have a growing knowledge of where He is working and how He is in control in every aspect. As Sproul says, ‘It is Christ, in his glory, who is the object of our worship and adoration’, I feel that this book will help you to realise, acknowledge and work this out day by day.

Ruan’s Refreshing Reality

Ulster continued their fantastic season on Friday evening with another win in the Magners League that moved them up to second in the table. They also have a first Heineken Cup QF since 1999 to look forward to at the start of April and numerous young players are coming through the ranks to show their quality and potential. Every thing looks bright for the Ravenhill side in the near future.

Now maybe you’re not an avid Rugby Union follower, maybe you don’t have an interest in any Sports, however I thought that it would be so refreshing to bring to you a few quotes from Ulster’s star player Ruan Pienaar, a Springbok who arrived in Belfast last October as a World Cup Winner with plenty of experience and talent. As expected, he has turned in many phenomenal appearances for the Ulstermen, and recently on a few occasions, he has been involved in kicking the points in the last play of the game to secure the win for his side.

Ruan Pienaar, Ulster's Half Back

The following are two quotes from his post-match interviews after the game against the Scarlets (18/2/11) and Glasgow (25/3/11):

vs. Scarlets – ‘I was a bit nervous taking that kick, all I could do was pray and I just want to thank God for giving us the talent to play this wonderful game and it’s good for us to get a result.’

vs. Glasgow – ‘Yeah, I dunno what’s going on, my debut back at Ravenhill I also got all the points but i’ve been very blessed, God has blessed us this season and things are going well at Ulster so just all the glory to Him.’

Personally, I think it is fantastic to see a man who could so easily take all the honour and glory for many match winning performances and so quickly shift that off himself to God. Little seems to be known of Ruan’s personal faith on the interweb but from these quotes I think it is fairly evident of his reality in life. Here is a sportsman who knows where his talent has come from and knows who he wants to glorify through playing his favourite game.

I found these post-match interviews to be a breath of fresh air during years when so many sportsman are quick to praise many others without even the slightest mention of the Lord who gave them the health, talent and strength to play these games.

Well done Ruan Pienaar, a man with so much talent, and a man with so much reality.

‘So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God’.

1 Corinthians 10:31

Iain D. Campbell at Knockbracken

For any of you who weren’t able to get along to Knockbracken’s Bible Conference Week in early February, the talks have now been made available on their snazzy, redesigned website.

The Conference ran from the 13th-16th of February and Dr. Iain D Campbell (Point Free Church, Lewis) was speaking on Christ in Hebrews. Incidentally, don’t make the mistake I did and think that any one who is from Lewis will know any body else who ever has lived there.

These are well worth a listen as Dr. Campbell went through the following titles very effectively with great challenge and application for his listeners.

1. The Person of Christ
2. The Priesthood of Christ
3. The Profession of Christ
4. The Promise of Christ

Enjoy!

“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the Heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with out weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may recieve mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

Standing the test of Time?

“February already…wow…how time flies, it was barely the start of 2011 and now we’re into mid-February”. Have you heard a conversation like this recently? If I had overheard someone saying this perhaps in 5th year or Lower 6th, I would have simply laughed it off. I used to think that those conversations were just for old people, or people with nothing really taking up their lives. However, I recently have had a change of heart. Ever since starting into University life, I have found that time simply slips away, passing me by at quite a rate…

Perhaps this is a topic which you’re no stranger too, you’ve always heard someone giving out various pearls of wisdom concerning time and how to use it wisely. I’m not going to go down the route of a Disney cliche and tell all Another King readers to go out and ‘make every moment count’, nor am I going to sound like an eighty year old woman and say that you are ‘to just enjoy the simple things in life, take each thing as it comes’.

Those are phrases which are fairly common, however my particular piece of advice actually stems from an article we were given in Stran the other day. It was about how to be effective Teachers as it went into various aspects of our lives and how they are to be used and moulded to make us efficient Teachers in every thing that we do.

I couldn’t help but see the comparisons between this and my own life and the usefulness it could have for the Faith. As young men and women of Christ, are we constantly evaluating aspects of our life to ensure they are bringing glory to God? In particular, I feel that many young people are probably falling short in their efforts when it comes to time management.

The following quote concerning time is taken from the article, “Time is irreplaceable and has no substitute. You can’t borrow or steal time or change it in any way; all you can do is to make the optimum use of the time you’ve got.”

I have simply one question to ask the Christian, are we standing the test of time? Are we making optimum use of it, to bring glory to God? Or perhaps are we simply wasting it, throwing it away with trivial pursuits. Why not have a time of self-evaluation, see what areas of your life are simply wasting precious time and try and cut them out or replace them.

We are reminded by James 4:14, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” In light of this, let’s ensure that during our youth and during our time on this earth, that we get serious with time management, and sort out an issue which can seriously hamper us in our Christian walk.

GO Rally 2011

After a prolonged Christmas break, every one at Another King hopes you’ve had a wonderful festive season and welcome to 2011!

I’m not sure what your January schedules are looking like, what resolutions you’ve decided to take up, perhaps some dreaded exams are looming. However, the start of a brand new year gives us an excellent opportunity to look forward and see what we can do with it. So with the GO Rally coming up this Friday evening, there’s a fantastic chance to already get planning to serve the Lord this year.

What does it hold in store for you?

Some information on R.P Mission Teams and ‘Student witnessing in Belfast’ will be provided during the night, and it’ll be a chance to get your hands on the application forms for this years GO Teams and the prayer cards. Inside information has also been leaked to suggest that there is one brand spanking new team available this year; so if these aren’t incentives to spend a Friday night away from the revision desk or cinema screen, I don’t know what is!

Please make the effort to come along and be challenged to serve this Summer! For all the important information, see below:

Date: Friday 7th January

Location: Dromore R.P.C (Brewery Lane, off Meeting Street)

Start Time: 8pm

Speaker and Topic: Rev. Vincent McDonnell on ‘Blow the Master’s Trumpet’

I am Legend

According to my room mate, this is ‘the scariest film he has ever seen and it gave him nightmares’. I’m not sure what you thought of it, but after watching it, I decided to add another movie blog-post to my repitoire. Few people know that the movie is actually based upon Robert Matheson’s 1954 book entitled ‘I am Legend’ and it went on to become the seventh highest grossing film of 2007….and of course, all this information is coming straight from it’s Wikipedia page…

The film does have a fairly gripping story line, we follow the footsteps of Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) who is the last known survivor of a plague that kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters. Dr. Neville continues on alone in New York City as he struggles valiantly to find a cure for the ‘darkseekers’, he takes great pride (maybe mixed with perhaps a sense of guilt) in the fact that Ground Zero is his site and that he will fix this great problem.

Of course I don’t want to ruin the story line for all you AK readers as I know I have now wetted your appetite to see it for yourselves. However, I did pick up a quote which got me thinking and I thought i’d share it with you. At the very end of the film, the audience are read this quote:

In 2009, a deadly virus burned through our civilization, pushing humankind to the edge of extinction. Dr. Robert Neville dedicated his life to the discovery of a cure and the restoration of humanity. On September 9th, 2012, at approximately 8:49 P.M., he discovered that cure. And at 8:52, he gave his life to defend it. We are his legacy. This is his legend. Light up the darkness.

I couldn’t help but learn some thing from this Dr. Neville, he was a man who sacrificed every thing to try and rekindle the human race rather than it disappear in the darkness. And with these last four poignant words at the end of the film ‘light up the darkness‘ speaking of his continual efforts to try and perservere in a world which greatly opposed him and was against every thing he was for.

This reminded me of the words at the start of John’s gospel, ‘The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ John 1:5

This verse portrays Jesus as the “light” that brings to this dark world true knowledge. He of course shone greatly during His time on earth, glorifying God in all that He did. And in Him being the ‘light of the world’ he brought the knowledge of a great and powerful salvation that would be available through His death. If you are starting to wonder what this all has got to do with ‘I am Legend’, I simply began to wonder that would we be known as people who lit up the darkness? Are we letting our faith shine out, even in the most dire of circumstances?

May we let Christ shine through us and follow his example at all times, being people who enable others to see Christ in all that we do. So I encourage you AK readers, light up the darkness! May we glorify God through our efforts in this.

“Portraits of Jesus” sermons now available

Each of the addresses from Lisburn’s Bible Conference Week are now available of the R.P.C Website. Professor Edward Donnelly spoke on the ‘Portrait’s of Jesus’ coming from the ‘I AM’ statements of the Bible. Please get on and download these and they are immensely helpful expositions of the text, so hopefully you will listen and learn from them.

Sermon titles include:

‘I am the Bread of Life’

‘I am the Light of the World’

‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’

‘I am the True Vine’

‘I am He’

Follow the link below to get on and take your pick of the sermons:

http://rpc.org/sermon/series/Portraits_of_Jesus

A Tribute….

If you happened to catch last Saturday’s big upset at Murrayfield, you would have witnessed a great spectacle of grit and determination as Scotland overcame the World Champions of Rugby. Their 21-17 win over the Springboks was a great occasion, but it wasn’t just the Rugby that caught my attention. I also heard possibly the best tribute to a rugby player during a match, the player in question, was Scottish prop Euan Murray.

Now just in case you think you’re suffering from deja vu, we have done a previous post about Murray, but I felt this short one is just another example of his staunch commitment to his faith and belief  and the effect it can have.

Cotter: ‘And of course Euan Murray won’t be available for Scotland’s 6 Nations matches against England and Ireland because of his belief of not to play Rugby on Sundays…..he’ll be sorely missed in the Scottish front row.’

Moore: ‘You know I really respect that, the man has made his decision and has the commitment to stick by it.’

(The above has been slightly paraphrased as I can’t remember it word for word. If you can find the exact reference whilst watching on iPlayer please inform me!)

So we see here how even this decision can have impacts on numerous people, perhaps a lesson for us all to learn here, our we following through our beliefs with utter conviction? We at Another King will always be in full support for Mr. Murray because of his stand for Christ and His day. (And I promise that this will be the last Rugby related post by me in a while!)

Not to be messed with!

Your Guide to Life

When you’ve been out and about recently, you’ll have noticed a chill in the air and a change in the colour of leaves, that’s right, Autumn is upon us! And I always really look forward to this time of the year, not so I can make the usual generic comments about how ‘the leaves are a lovely shade this time of year’ and ‘look how dark it is outside already!’, but because it is the time of year when Rugby’s finest from the South Hemisphere come on tour and so the Autumn Internationals start! Yes, that’s right, we can look forward to our weekends when terrestial T.V coverage will be overrun with some classic fixtures and some of the sport’s great players will be on display.

So in my usual preparation to these great matches, I was doing a bit of reading on how the Tri-Nations teams had been performing up to now and my eye was drawn to an article on Australia’s new up and coming Out Half, Quade Cooper. He is a fantastic athlete with a great set of hands and feet and a mind to run the game, however it wasn’t his skill at the game of Rugby that caught my eye.

Cooper in action for the Wallabies earlier in the year

In the Rugby World magazine, Cooper was featured and interviewed in an article that focused on the beginnings of his career, where he found his motivation and desire, and what he hopes to achieve. As a young sportsman, these are perfectly normal questions to face, but it was his responses which intrigued me most. The article started with a quote from Michael Jordan, the world’s greatest ever Basketball player, who said this:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost 300 games. 26 times i’ve been entrusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again. And that is why I succeed.

'Air Jordan' showing his skill in his famous Chicago Bulls No.23 Shirt

The article went on to explain how it was Jordan’s constant embrace of risk in the pursuit of success that drew Cooper to him and therefore this is why Jordan’s quote has been an inspiration to him. This sentence then followed; “Forget the Bible, for a 22 year old fast emerging world rugby star, Jordan’s story is a good a guide to life as Cooper is going to get.”

A very interesting quote. In todays world, I wonder how many millions upon millions simply ‘forget the Bible’ when it comes to working out their own life guides. I do wonder where people get their guide to life, which philosopher, celebrity or personal thought do they turn to in order to have some direction in their lives. Many today perhaps think the Bible to slow and old fashioned to keep up with their hip and exciting ways of living, like Quade Cooper, success, money and status has given the world it’s drive to cast aside the holy word of God and catch and hold to other meaningless and empty words to guide them.

As for Christians, we know that the Bible is God’s infallible word; Psalm 119:105 ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path’ and Joshua 1:8 ‘This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.’ are just a few verses which show how important it should be in our every day lives.

May we take great confidence that we know our life guide is coming from the very mouth of the Lord, that every word in the book is fashioned for our own well being and good.

Psalm 119:103, ‘How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!’